Although I have to defend Donald Trump the man’s First Amendment rights in his “Second Amendment” threat, I can’t defend Donald Trump the candidate for saying it. It was absolutely the wrong thing to say. Mr. Trump has a long history of lashing out at people who disagree with him or are a threat to the Trump brand. That explains why Trump made this unscripted remark. For those who did not hear the original remark, here it is:

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks … although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know."

Maybe Trump was not trying to threaten Ms. Clinton; he was just emitting his stream-of-consciousness babble that made him such a powerful entertainer. But as an honest and truthful view of Mr. Trump’s soul, it’s a scary and dark place.

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Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump says he was speaking about the power of gun rights supporters, not violence, when he made controversial comments about Hillary Clinton and the second amendment. (Aug. 10)
AP

I believe that 99.99 percent of gun owners are rational, sane people. They are not going to pull their weapon when somebody cuts them off in traffic or they get into a heated argument in the local bar. According to reputable sources, slightly over 100 million Americans own guns. If this 99.99% are sane, competent and qualified to safely own weapons, that means there’s 10,000 people out there who aren’t and therefore are a serious danger behind a gun. This sounds realistic, judging by the number of muggings, murders, accidents and gun-related killings that occur in the United States each year. If only one person out of 1,000 in this small group is truly psychopathic and is thinking, “I gotta take this woman out,” there are 10 crazies in the United States seriously thinking about assassinating a likely president of the United States.

In this country’s 240-year history, there have been four successful assassinations of sitting presidents, the last being John F. Kennedy in 1963. Most of today’s citizens were not even born in 1963 and cannot conceive of this happening again. Mr. Trump’s remark was provocative and is absolutely deadly when you consider the audience of 10 that may act on it.

Although Hillary Clinton has consistently said that all she wants to do is tighten up gun ownership requirements (undoubtedly to keep guns out of the hands of the crazies), all the Trump camp does is agitate an already volatile crowd with the mantra, “She’s going to take your guns away!” If the 99.99 percent of rational, sane gun owners could see beyond the Trump mantra and realize that their gun ownership rights are not threatened, this election would quickly become a more rational process.

The truly scary thing is that Mr. Trump is very likely to make similarly deadly unscripted remarks to world leaders like Kim Jong-un, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. These are volatile leaders who have a dismal record in upholding basic rights for which the United States stands. Two of them are nuclear powers. Although Mr. Trump has promised to become a model of presidential image and restraint, he has shown that he cannot do that.

As the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, Mr. Trump is unfit to be president.